I am grateful for the opportunity to meet up with my family today. What a blessing they have been and continue to be in my life. Thank You, Father, for that wonderful gift.
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One thing that I find annoying is people who bend (break is probably more accurate!) the law for the sake of convenience. Witnessing other drivers commit rolling stops is not unusual, especially on my bus routes. (By the way, I learned in my bus training that a legal stop is three seconds long.) I understand nobody likes getting stuck behind a school bus, but I don’t think it’s because I am there with my bus. People do it all the time!
Another infringement on the safety of the roadways is cutting corners. When turning onto another road, many do not enter that road squarely into their side of the road but have a bad habit of cutting diagonally across the other lane to get into it. It may save you milliseconds, but it is very reckless, especially if another vehicle is close to being in the same spot. If you are in a fender-bender, that savings of milliseconds will be multiplied exponentially into possibly hours of paperwork, and the financial end of things will blow up as well!
These kinds of things can have all sorts of negative repercussions, all for the sake of convenience or for saving minuscule increments of time in our lives.
But what about spiritual shortcuts? Some of those may be more obvious (I think “white” lies fall into this category, but in reality, a lie…is a lie), but many of these shortcuts are things that others might not even notice but impact our lives significantly.
I realize that it takes time and has to be a deliberate act on our part, but one big example is the importance of reading your Bible daily. When talking with my dad today, we were talking about my Uncle Stan, who we knew was on the verge of death (we found out later that he had passed last night). He was the husband of Ruth, one of my dad’s sisters, who died two years ago. One of his memories of her was her determination to have a devotional time as a young lady. Dad said it wasn’t unusual for her to have a flashlight under her covers reading her Bible – it was that important to her to maintain her relationship with her Lord and Savior.
How many of us “shortcut” that part of our life by side-stepping that time with God? We get it in our heads that our time at church is sufficient. But it truly isn’t… Cutting corners in our lives shortchanges our growth. It deprives us of growing in our faith, of becoming more like our Savior, and getting rid of those things in life that we readily accept but at the same time continue to drive a wedge between ourselves and God.
Do what is right, stop, and spend time reading your Bible and listening to what God has to tell you – no rolling stops allowed because those don’t count. No cutting corners in your relationship with Him – take time…make time. Saving those small increments of time for things as trivial as flipping through Facebook posts or watching reels on Instagram are not fair trades. Whatever your vices, examine where your time goes and adjust in the light of eternity. Invest in what is truly important. You won’t regret it.
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NLT
I have hidden your word in my heart,
….that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11 NLT, NIV
Mar 3rd, 2024, Sun, 7:44 pm
